A Cyclist Accidents Typology: survey methodology using a medical registry

摘要

Bicycle is promoted in many major cities as an healthy and eco-friendly transportation mode.However, cycling is risky and safety issues concern a few thousands of victims every year. In Francewe estimate an annual incidence rate of 70 road injuries per 100,000 inhabitants. Most of the existingstudies focus on particular accident factors and are based on police registry. However, police data arebiased and non-representative of cyclist crash circumstances. In this work, we propose to improveknowledge of accident circumstances by surveying 3337 cyclists injured in 2009-2011 and identifiedfrom a road trauma registry around Lyon in France. The main objective is to build a cycling accidentconfiguration typology from detailed collisions or falls circumstances. To do so, we built up aquestionnaire and tested it. The pilot survey response rate was 18%. Respondents were older, moreoften women, having more serious accidents, more often in urban areas. We observed that 1/3 accidentoccurred on a non-business trip, 1/3 on a commuting trip and 1/4 while practicing a cycling sport. Athird party was involved in 45% of crashes whereas 37% declared that an obstacle, a loss of control(19%) or/and a mechanical failure (13%) was one of the crash factors. Learning from the pilot stage,the questionnaire design improvement is detailed, enabling a reduction of the selection bias. The finalresponse rate reached 43%. Overall, the survey is successful and improves knowledge in comparisonwith existing studies.